City officials agreed to appropriate additional money to the Columbus Animal Care Services (CACS) budget to help pay employees for the rest of this year.
Columbus City Council members last week voted 8-0 to pass the first reading of an ordinance appropriating $43,000 from the city’s general fund to compensate part-time workers who carry out responsibilities inside the facility like feeding animals and keeping the place clean.
Ordinances must be passed on two readings to be approved. Council member Jerone Wood, D-District 3, was absent.
CACS Director Nichol Birdwell-Goodin said it’s not uncommon for a full-time person to help with the cleaning, but the part-timers otherwise give the full-time employees the ability to focus efforts on other areas.
“One of the things that we’ve been working with Nichol and human resources on is to try to allocate the resources the best we can, utilizing part-time employees at Animal Care Services for these less glamorous jobs,” Eric Frey, executive director of administration, told council members. “… It is a really good allocation of resources. Unfortunately, it’s been costly — eight to 10 part-time employees working in and out of there, and trying to be really strategic in working some four-hour shifts and longer, just because you get them in when you can, and so we’re now to the point where we need a little more birthday money to get through the year.”
The appropriation is on top of the original CACS budget of $144,000.
Council member Kent Anderson, R-District 5, said that while he was going to vote for the appropriation, he thought there should be further discussion about the CACS’ budget later, calling it “not sustainable.”
“I think one of the things that we want to do is work with you and look for ways to be as efficient as we can with costs and resources,” Frey responded. “So yeah, we are more than willing to have that conversation, whether that’s budget committee or whoever wants to sit down and talk about that and go through those kind of strategies and that kind of discussion, but right now we just want somebody to clean up the pens.”
